Saturday, October 1, 2011

The Worst of YouTube

I only occasionally frequent YouTube, but every so often I come across something religion-related that truly frustrates, shocks, or demonstrates the harm that religion can cause. Below are three such videos. I'll start with Richard Dawkins' interview with creationist Wendy Wright:

This is just part one of seven, but I imagine most people don't make it much further simply because the exchange is so frustrating. Wright is calmly oblivious for the duration of the interview, willfully ignoring Dawkins' points with a smile plastered permanently on her face. There's a point where Dawkins tries to anticipate her mention of Haeckel's embryos, but she says that, no, what she was really going to talk about were those drawings of fetuses in the textbooks. The woman isn't even well-versed enough to recognize her own talking points. It goes to show that with some people, there's just no point trying to have a conversation. They'll just smile and nod, then Gish Gallop over to next topic.

The next video, thankfully, isn't so much irritating as it is hilarious:

This is David Barton, a man best known for trying to revise America's history to show that it was meant to be a "Christian nation." He's been enthusiastically endorsed by conservative politicians like Newt Gingrich, Bobby Jindal, Michelle Bachmann and Mike Huckabee, as well as libertarian pundit Glenn Beck. And here we see this influential idiot declaring that God hated the brickmakers of Babel because they were damned dirty socialists. Let's count the levels on which his reasoning is laughable:

He's assuming the truth of an obviously fictional event.

Creating similar bricks does not make people look and act the same.

Socialism has nothing to do with everyone looking and acting the same.

An impartial reading of the text reveals that God dislikes the construction because it shows the people are a legitimate threat to his sovereignty.

There's a freaking brick wall right behind him.

Finally, an appalling example of religion being injected into a public school:

This is possibly the most blatant breach of church-state separation I've ever seen. Christian musician B-SHOC all but acknowledges that he's breaking the law by evangelizing at a public school, and seems to positively relish this fact. I have a feeling he might view this sort of child indoctrination differently if it were a group of Muslims that had come in and convinced students to convert to Islam. The Freedom From Religion Foundation has notified the district's superintendent, so I can only hope that those involved (including the school's principal, who helped set up the event) will face the proper consequences.

That's enough shocking stupidity for one day. Next time I'll cover some of the useful, quality content that YouTube has to offer.